This week: Can we eradicate polio? We put that question to the man who led the effort to eradicate smallpox, D. A. Henderson. An update on the commercial whaling controversy from the ongoing International Whaling Commission meeting in Morocco. A tale about globalizing egg surrogacy. Elsa brings news about ancient human migrations, and a clue to the mysterious death of a renowned 17th century Italian painter.

Fighting Polio: Although the disease has been eradicated from large parts of the world, polio continues to thrive albeit in small numbers in a few countries. You may remember our coverage of the resurgence of polio in Asia in podcast 67. And new study published this week discusses polio cases in Nigeria, some of which were caused by the live virus in the oral polio vaccine. We speak about the feasibility of eradicating polio with epidemiologist D. A. Henderson. He’s the man who led the campaign that eradicated smallpox. And by the way, this is a podcast exclusive interview! (Image credit: CDC)
Guest: D. A. Henderson
The World Health Organization on polio.
Global Polio Eradication.
About the polio vaccine from the CDC.
BBC polio resource page.
Our story on polio resurgence in podcast 67.

Legalizing Commercial Whaling: The International Whaling Commission meeting in Agadir, Morocco is about to end. The BBC’s Richard Black has been following the meeting from outside the conference in Agadir. He tells us what he’s been hearing about the negotiations. The rumor is that even environmental groups like Greenpeace may support the new compromise proposal to legalize small-scale commercial whaling by some countries.
Guest: The BBC’s Richard Black
“Whaling ‘Peace Deal’ Falls Apart” on the BBC.
Our Science Forum discussion about whaling with Stephen Palumbi.
BBC coverage.

Google Baby: An egg from an American female donor is fertilized with sperm from an Israeli man who takes the fertilized egg to India to grow in the womb of an Indian woman. The outsourcing of surrogacy is the topic of Zippi Brand Frank’s documentary, “Google Baby”, which is airing on HBO.
Guest: Zippi Brand Frank
Movie Website and trailer.

Elsa’s Favorite Stories:

• North Feels Uphill: On the map, north is up. That convention may be messing with our minds, so we believe that going north will take more time and effort than going south. Psychologists found that that’s the case when they quizzed college students about how long it would take to travel between the same two points by traveling north versus south.
  The study.
  Science News coverage.
• Prehistoric Migrations to the Americas: Most genetic evidence suggests that prehistoric humans migrated from Asia to the Americas just once. But a careful study of skulls–both recent and fossilized–indicates that modern Native Americans are not, in fact, the direct descendants of the earliest Americans. Instead, ancient and modern Native Americans probably descended from two separate groups that migrated from Asia at different times.
  The study.
  ScienceNOW coverage.
  Atlas of the Human Journey from National Geographic.
  Website of study co-author Katerina Harvati.
• Caravaggio’s Remains Identified?: Baroque Italian painter Caravaggio died of unknown causes in his late thirties. Now anthropologists think they’ve tracked down his bones in a church crypt in Tuscany. Although the skeleton still doesn’t reveal the cause of death, it does contain unhealthy levels of lead. Lead poisoning from his own paints could have weakened Caravaggio, and probably did little to improve his violent personality.
  Coverage from The Guardian.
  Wall Street Journal article about Silvano Vinceti and his work on Renaissance cold cases.
  See some of Caravaggio’s paintings.

This week: We’re talking about urban raptors over at the Science Forum. Don’t forget to stop by and join the conversation with wildlife biologist David Bird. Two stories in today’s podcast are linked to this latest Forum discussion. One’s about raptors struggling to survive in Beijing. The other is about cities around the world that are providing good habitat for birds of prey. You’ll also hear about some fascinating new images of the Sun. Elsa’s back with stories about Roman ingots, neutrinos and asteroids.

Protecting Beijing’s Raptors: Birds of prey still streak Beijing’s skies. But their numbers are dwindling. Thankfully for these birds, some people are watching out for them.
Report by: Ari Daniel Shapiro.
See photos for the long-eared owls and other birds in Ari’s story.
Beijing Raptor Rescue Center.
World Center for Birds of Prey.

Raptors Elsewhere are Adapting to City Life: Urban life isn’t always bad for birds of prey. In fact some species are flocking to cities around the world. What do cities have to offer? Listen to this interview to find out. And don’t forget to join our online conversation with wildlife biologist David Bird over in our Science Forum. The conversation is open until May 7th.
Guest: David Bird.
Stop by the Science Forum discussion with Professor Bird.
Watch live videos of the Peregrine family at Université de Montréal.

Elsa’s Favorite Stories:

• Frosty Asteroid: Astronomers have spied evidence of water ice on an asteroid. Most asteroids seem to have dried up already, but this one harbors water that’s probably billions of years old. Researchers think a similar body could have crashed into the early Earth and filled the oceans.
  There are two studies, here and here.
  BBC coverage.
• Roman Ingots: Lead bricks from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck will shield a high tech particle detector in Italy. The lead on board the ship is so old that it is no longer radioactive, making it the perfect barrier to keep stray radiation away from sensitive experiments. One such experiment aims to clarify the nature of subatomic particles called neutrinos.
  Nature News coverage.
  The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events.
  A report about neutrino science, from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
• Bat Flowers: Bats are important pollinators for flowers in deserts and the tropics. Bat flowers make more pollen than their hummingbird-pollinated relatives–but it’s not because the bats waste it. A new study suggests a rather counter-intuitive explanation for the flowers’ heavy load.
  The study.
  Pictures of bat-pollinated flowers.
  The researchers’ website.

New Images of the Sun: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in Tucson Arizona has been taking pictures of the Sun. And they recently released a set of fascinating new images. Don’t forget to check them out through links below. And you MUST watch (below) this movie of an explosion on the sun’s surface.
Guest: John Leibacher, an astronomer at the National Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
See more images taken by NASA’s SDO here.
Watch this video of an eruption on the surface of the Sun.

This week: The United Nations hosts an international climate summit. Meanwhile, the Indian government pledges to cap its carbon emissions, and a scientist says China should harvest its tremendous wind power potential. We remember a cave-dwelling Italian scientist. And Elsa Youngsteadt brings us animal news: new species of whale-eating worms, paralyzed rats that can walk, and a surprising finding about how monarch butterflies navigate.

UN Climate Summit: World leaders met this week at the United Nations climate conference in New York. Many leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, acknowledged the urgent need to reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide. But prospects for negotiating a climate treaty in Copenhagen this December look grim.
Report: By The World’s Alex Gallafent.

India Promises Cuts: India has refused to accept binding international limits on its carbon emissions unless the United States agrees to do the same. But this week the Indian government made a surprising announcement; it promised to cap its emissions by 2020.
Guest: Jairam Ramesh, Indian Environment Minister.

Wind Power in China: China has invested billions of dollars in renewable energy. The country hopes to get 20% of its electricity from wind and solar power by 2020. But a recently published study in Science magazine says China could think a lot bigger when it comes to renewables.
Guest: Michael McElroy, Professor of Environmental Studies, Harvard University.

Elsa’s favorite science stories:

• Marine Scavengers: Scientists have discovered nine new species of marine worms that scavenge on dead whales.
• Rats Recover from Spinal Injuries: An international team of researchers has succeeded in getting rats with spinal cord injuries to walk again. A combination of electrical stimulation, drugs, and exercise caused the legs to move and bear weight, although the rats’ brains were not in charge.
  The study
  Video of walking rats
  
  Video credit: Grégoire Courtine
• Monarch Navigation: Each year, monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles to Central Mexico using the sun as a compass. But how do the insects track the changing position of the sun? New research shows they use a biological clock that resides in their antennae.
  The study

Remembering a Cave-dwelling Scientist: Maurizio Montalbini subjected himself to some bizarre experiments. He spent a good part of his life alone, underground, in caves. His work gave us important clues about human biological clocks. We remember the scientist, who died of a stroke last week.

Music: In the Belly of the Whale, by Newsboys.

A pig in Egypt

[player] Download MP3

This week, we look at how industrial farms may be creating conditions for new flu strains. The H1N1 swine flu contains genes from pig, bird, and human flu viruses. Some scientists suspect that large pig farms may help incubate such hybrid viruses. We talk to Prof. Ellen Silbergeld of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Meanwhile, Egypt is slaughtering its pigs in an attempt to control swine flu. Experts say this strategy is misguided, and it has set off protests by Egyptians who depend on pigs for their livelihood.

In Antarctica, more evidence of warming. A huge piece of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has shattered into icebergs. Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, talks about what the satellite images show.

A new study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) examines the behavior and well-being of people in 18 countries. Among the findings: Americans are overweight, the Japanese watch a lot of TV, and Greece and Austria have the most bullies.

Plus more on the Flores Island hobbits, and a new study says bees may not be in so much trouble, after all. And how a brain chemical may help you get along with your spouse.

Some Useful Links:

More about swine flu from the BBC and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

The bee study and more on pollinators from The National Academies of Science. (Here you can listen to a podcast on pollinators and read the book Status of Pollinators in North America for free.)

More on Flores hobbits from the BBC and from Nature, the journal that published the study. (Note: the Nature link will only be open access for a few days.)

The oxytocin study and more about oxytocin. Finally, a paper on how to change brain chemistry without drugs.

Songs

Booker T. & The MG’s, Oo Wee Baby, I Love You

All over the world, disease and habitat destruction have caused honey bee numbers to plummet. Bees are crucial because they pollinate 80 percent of our fruit and vegetable crops. This week’s podcast begins with a story from Frankfurt, Germany, about how urban apiculture may give the bees a boost.

A bigger environmental problem is climate change. Everyone thinks of cars as a key contributor to global warming, but buildings are responsible for about half the total greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption around the world. One group of architects wants to change that. They call themselves Architecture 2030. By 2030, they want to design buildings that use no fossil fuels.

Last week, an earthquake hit central Italy, killing almost 300 people. One Italian scientist, Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, predicted the earthquake on the basis of increased radon levels. Nano Seeber, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, talks about the difficulties in predicting earthquakes. Keep an eye on other earthquakes around the world at the USGS Earthquake Center.

Also this week: chimpanzees exchange meat for sex; some birds can tell where you’re looking; and researchers propose a clever new way to stop malaria by killing only old mosquitoes (see the original research paper).

Music:
Slim Harpo, I’m a King Bee
The Hives, A Stroll Through Hive Manor Corridors